


will the light begin to pull me

by shineyma



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Grief, Regret, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 10:37:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6902464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grant has a confusing day in Vault D.</p><p>[An apology gift and thus not my usual fare.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	will the light begin to pull me

**Author's Note:**

> **PLEASE NOTE** : As mentioned in the summary, this is an apology fic. As such, it is tailored to the recipient’s tastes (it’d be a pretty lame gift if it weren’t, right?) and is _not_ my standard fare. If you’re a fan of how I usually write Ward, you might not like this—and, conversely, if you like this, you might not like how I usually write Ward. Just a fair warning.
> 
> And, more importantly, warnings for references to suicide attempts/minor suicidal thoughts.
> 
> Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review!

Grant doesn’t get many visitors.

Actually, he doesn’t get _any_. A visitor is someone who comes to _visit_ , and the only people who walk through the door—the very _close_ door, right there at the top of the stairs, that might as well be miles away for how far out of his reach it is—are Coulson and Skye, and they don’t come to visit. They come for intel.

Which he guesses makes them interrogators. Or questioners, really. Nothing that’s happened to him in SHIELD’s custody can really be called an interrogation. He has plenty of experience with interrogations—torture and restraints and starvation, all part and parcel of being a specialist—and Skye’s bitterness doesn’t hurt _that_ much.

It does hurt, though. But he knows he deserves it, so he’s trying not to think about that.

All of which is to say, he’s not totally sure what to think—or do—when the barrier goes transparent again to reveal not Skye or Coulson, but Simmons, perched in the chair outside his cell with the control tablet in her lap.

Well, a greeting’s usually a good place to start, and since she doesn’t look like she’s about to offer one… “Hi, Simmons.”

Her lips thin. She doesn’t say anything.

Something in his chest goes tight, stretched thin and long like a rubber band approaching its breaking point—or just like her mouth. He’s not used to this expression from her, closed off and cold. She used to smile at him.

But it’s been a really long time since anyone smiled at him. He doesn’t know what he was expecting.

Still, though, there’s something…off about her. This isn’t the dirty look he got from her in Cuba, the cold disdain that screamed out from her expression every time their eyes met. (Or at least until—but he’s not thinking about _until_.)

“Do you…need something?” he asks, a little more tentatively than he means to. He was _aiming_ for gentle, but it’s close enough, he guesses.

Simmons lifts her chin. Her expression smooths out, blank and still like a frozen lake. It’s a good try at emotionless, but her white-knuckled grip on the control tablet gives her away.

It also—considering what happened the last time he had not-Skye-not-Coulson company—makes his heart skip a beat. He breathes past it, pushing down the fear. If she’s here to punish him the way Fitz did, there’s nothing he can do to stop her. He can accept it and hope she stops before she kills him…or, failing that, hope that killing him helps her sleep at night. Those dark circles under her eyes make it pretty clear she’s not doing too well on that front these days.

He wants to help her—help all of them—and if dying’s the best way to do that…well, he made his bed, didn’t he? And he’s a specialist. He always knew he would die young. Now’s a good a time as any.

But maybe he’s getting ahead of himself. She hasn’t made any move to touch the tablet at all, let alone take his air away.

She also still isn’t talking, but he can’t imagine she came down here just to sit and stare at him. Maybe another prompt? He thinks he can manage gentle this time, if he concentrates.

(He shouldn’t need to concentrate. He used to be able to do this without thinking. But doing things without thinking leads to—leads to things he’s not thinking about. There’s a kind of irony there, maybe.)

“Sim—”

“I,” she interrupts, and the single syllable is so sharp it could cut glass (or his wrists…but he’s not doing that anymore), “am better than you.”

Well, okay.

“Yeah,” he agrees, because she is. That’s never been in question. Simmons is sweet and kind and…and _good_. He’s always known that. He knew it when he walked onto the Bus for the first time and he knew it when she argued against killing the Incentivized Centipede soldiers and he _definitely_ knew it when he woke up after slashing himself open and recognized her stitches in his wrist.

Grant is a screw-up and a traitor and Simmons is good enough to save the life of a man who (she thinks) tried to kill her. Of _course_ she’s better than him.

(He wasn’t trying to kill her, though. Her _or_ Fitz. That’s what they all think, he knows it is, but he wasn’t. He’s more than good at killing: he’s the _best_. If he wanted them dead, they’d be dead. What he _wanted_ was for them to be okay, because he was trying to save them, give them an escape from the death trap the Bus had turned into in the wake of John’s fury.

But it turns out saving people’s something he’s _not_ good at. Fitz’s condition is another thing he’s not thinking about.)

“I am,” she says, insistent, like she didn’t even hear his agreement. “You’re a liar and a traitor and a—” She drags in a breath, too quick and too deep, and that thing in Grant’s chest pulls even tighter as he watches (because that’s all he can do from in here, watch and wait and nothing else) her fight for control. “I’m _better_ than you.”

“I know you are,” he says, but he doesn’t think she hears him. Her breath’s still coming too fast and beneath that angry flush to her cheeks, she’s way too pale. Something’s wrong with her. “Simmons. Simmons, _listen_.”

She’s not listening.

“Jemma,” he tries, but it’s the echo of it—or maybe _he’s_ the echo; the sharp crack is way louder than his plea—from the top of the stairs that gets her attention.

“Jemma,” Skye says again, gentler. Gentler than she’s been with him since…he’s not thinking about that either. Not that it matters; she’s not looking at him. “What are you doing down here?”

The time between Simmons startling out of—out of whatever that was—and looking up at Skye is less than the span of two heartbeats. It’s long enough, though, for her to get her composure back. She glances up and over her shoulder with a faint, pleasant smile that chills Grant to the bone.

If he hadn’t just seen her, he’d never know she was so—

(So _what_? What the hell _was_ that?)

When did she learn to hide that kind of emotion? To hide _anything_?

“Nothing.” She stands and sets the control tablet back in its stand. “Just checking in.”

Without sparing Grant a glance, she taps the tablet once, and just like that, he’s closed off again—just him, his tiny cell, and everything he’s not thinking.

 

 

 

(He _has_ been thinking about Malta. Not about that bastard Quinn, or about Hall, but about before—when he was trying to give Skye some last minute tips and she wouldn’t take it seriously. He told her about Thomas.

Kind of. Really, he _lied_ about Thomas. He painted himself in the best possible light, because he wanted her to trust him and to do what he said.

Except it wasn’t a complete lie. He _did_ protect Thomas from Christian, day in and day out, before and after that day at the well. It was just that one day that he failed, that he made the wrong choice, and ruined everything.

Thomas used to love him for protecting him, but after that one failure—he hated him. Always. That one bad day erased every single bit of good he did, before and after.

He’s been thinking about that, too.)

 

 

 

Three hours later, the barrier goes transparent again. It’s Skye, this time, and she’s frowning like he’s something disgusting she found on the bottom of her shoe.

He’s getting used to that frown. He doesn’t like it, but he’s getting used to it.

“What did you do to Simmons?” she demands.

“Nothing,” he says, and it rings a hell of a lot falser than Simmons’ did. He lifts his hands in confusion. “She just came down to—”

“I don’t mean earlier,” she snaps. “I mean—before. You did something, didn’t you? In Cuba?”

Grant hesitates. He doesn’t wanna lie to her, but he doesn’t know what she’s asking. She _knows_ what happened in Cuba…or at least what they all think happened. Telling her the truth—that he gave Simmons and Fitz the best chance he could, got them away from John before John’s anger over that EMP could drive him to the kind of cruelty he was capable of at his worst—will only make her think he’s lying.

“She and Fitz were locked in a storage pod,” he says, deciding to keep it simple. “And I dropped it into the ocean.”

Skye whirls away to pace—stomp, really—a line behind the chair. “You know that’s not what I’m talking about!”

“No, I don’t.” He shakes his head, wishing he knew how to…well, there’s a lot he wishes. “What—?”

“You hurt her,” Skye says, but it sounds more like a plea than an accusation. “You—Fitz said you separated them.”

“I did,” he confirms, watching (because it’s still all he can do) with concern the way her fists clench at her side. There’s so much _anger_ in her now, and it’s beautiful on her (like everything is beautiful on her), but he knows from experience that it’s not good for a person. “Just for a few minutes, to get them on the Bus.”

There’s more—an explanation: Fitz and Simmons are too close, too loyal, to abandon each other; neither one of them would try to escape if the other was still in custody, so separating them for the brief trip into more secure surroundings kept them cooperative—but it sticks in his throat at the way Skye’s face crumples.

“You’re lying,” she says weakly.

“I’m not,” he promises. “I—”

“Don’t _tell_ me you’re not going to lie to me!” she shouts. “You’re lying right now! I _know_ you did something to her, something _worse_.” Her voice cracks on _worse_ , and just like that, the sudden flare of fury dies out. “You _must_ have.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, because he is—not that he didn’t do anything worse than drop Simmons out of the Bus (wasn’t that bad enough?), but for whatever this is. For whatever’s got her down here accusing him, for whatever was up with Simmons earlier, for whatever’s wrong with Fitz, and…

He’s sorry for a lot of things, is the point.

Maybe she believes him, or maybe she’s just done. Either way, she turns on her heel and leaves, taking the stairs two at a time.

She doesn’t opaque the barrier. That thing in his chest from earlier tangles itself into painful knots as he watches her flee.

 

 

 

(He also thinks about escape. What prisoner doesn’t?

But John is dead and the team hates him and HYDRA is…HYDRA. Where would he even go?)

 

 

 

A sound—the tiny, soft scuff of a shoe against concrete—wakes him in the middle of the night, and he’s got just enough time to sit up before Simmons is on top of him.

For a heartbeat or two, he’s frozen by it, by her warm weight on his thighs, the first human contact he’s had since—well, probably since she stitched him up all those times, saving his life when he tried to end it, but he doesn’t remember any of that. Just the button and the paper and the wall and the blood, and then waking dazed and hurting and still right here in this cell with its thoughts.

Anyway.

The last time he _remembers_ physical contact is being dragged into here months ago. He hasn’t touched or _been_ touched since the moment the barrier went up. So it takes him a second to recover from the sudden shock of it.

Simmons uses that second to hit him.

It’s a surprisingly hard punch, and the part of him that’s not _so fucking confused_ is actually pretty proud of her. He’s also pretty _winded_ , since she aimed it at his sternum, but not so much so that he doesn’t reflexively catch her wrist when she moves to do it again.

She deserves the chance to hit him. He knows that. Hell, she deserves a lot more than that—the whole _team_ does.

But there’s something wrong with her, and he’s worried. The barrier’s down, all that empty space that’s been taunting him in reach for the first time in months, but even though it would be easy—so, so easy—to knock her out and _run_ , he doesn’t.

She’s in his cell. She has to know how dangerous that could be. If he weren’t…if he were the guy that she thinks, that they all think, he is…

What is she doing here?

“Jemma—”

“I’m better than you,” she snaps, tone defensive and angry like she’s responding to an insult.

“I know you are.” He catches her other fist as she lashes out with it (her skin is soft and warm and he wants to touch more, touch _all_ of it—but he knows he doesn’t deserve it, didn’t have the right before and sure as fuck doesn’t have it now). “No one would ever think you weren’t.”

“You’re a murderer and a traitor,” she says. “You’re evil.”

It’s not the first time those words have been thrown at him. He’s been hearing all of them on a pretty regular basis since the uprising, in fact, and like so many other things, he’s gotten used to it.

But for the first time, they’re not said with anger or spite or hate.

They’re said like…like…

“You kill in-innocent people,” she says. She’s trembling in his lap, and he can feel her pulse, rabbiting away under his fingers.  “You’re a liar and—” She drags in another one of those too-quick-too-deep breaths. “—and I’m nothing like you. I’m _not_.”

…like she’s not talking to him at all.

“Why do you need to convince yourself of that?” he asks, honestly mystified, and she shatters.

That’s the only word for it. Right in front of his eyes, she just _breaks_ , collapsing in on herself like…he doesn’t even know what. Like something, _anything_ , other than the person she is, than the strong, unwavering woman who jumped out of a plane without a parachute to save her team—who threw herself on a _grenade_ and turned down HYDRA and looked him in the eye and all but _dared_ him to kill her in Cuba.

She’s sobbing. She’s in his lap and she’s sobbing like her heart is broken, curling in on herself like—and this is even _worse_ than not knowing what to compare her to—a wounded animal.

Grant’s been there, but he _deserved_ to be there. Seeing Simmons like this, feeling her shake in his lap and hearing her sobs echoing off the walls of his prison…

The thing in his chest is going tight again, pulling pulling pulling like his skin might split right open, but he pushes it down and aside. This isn’t about him or his pain. It’s about hers and how it’s wrong. It doesn’t belong in her.

This isn’t supposed to happen to her. She doesn’t deserve this. She’s _good_ , an actually genuinely good person who _helps_ people and saves lives and _definitely_ should not be crying in a traitor’s cell in the middle of the night.

He doesn’t know what to do.

Well. _Grant_ doesn’t know what to do.

But he’s been a lot of people in his life, people other than Grant Ward, and for one of them, this is actually kind of familiar. There was an undercover op a few years ago, some unstable heiress he seduced for…actually, he doesn’t remember why (other than “orders”), and it doesn’t matter anyway. What matters is the heiress he had to seduce, the way she used to cry on him, and how he got used to comforting her when he wasn’t talking her down from a fit of rage.

What matters is that he can pull that cover up, pull it _on_ , and be that guy. _That_ guy knows to pull Simmons forward, let her cry against his chest as he hugs her close, arms firm enough to be reassuring but loose enough not to make her feel trapped. _That_ guy knows how to rub comforting circles against her back and murmur soothing nothings into her hair.

And if he gets a little too deep in the cover—deep enough that a few of those soothing nothings come out in Spanish instead of English—well, he’s pretty sure she doesn’t notice.

He’s also pretty sure she doesn’t notice when the door opens, or when Skye stumbles her way down the stairs. The sight of her knocks the cover away, leaving Grant alone with his lapful of broken scientist, but now that he’s _started_ comforting her, he can keep it going.

Not that he figures he’ll get the chance. Any way you slice it, Simmons crying in his lap—in his _bed_ —looks pretty bad. He’s expecting Skye to go tearing right back up the stairs, go grab Trip or May or someone to beat the shit out of him and/or put him down right here and now.

What he’s _not_ expecting is for her to walk over the line without hesitation—and he’s sure as hell not expecting her to crawl up the end of his bed to make herself comfortable between Simmons and the wall.

There are now _two_ women who hate him basically sitting on top of him in the middle of the night. Grant is so confused.

Skye’s not paying him any mind, though; she’s focused on Simmons, on curling herself around her (and also Grant, in the process, but this _isn’t about him_ and he needs to remember that) and cuddling in close.

“Jemma,” she whispers, soft and sad, and Simmons’ breath hitches audibly.

“Skye,” she says, voice so miserably tiny that Grant kind of wants to kill someone.

(But no. No. Killing people is what got him into this mess. It’s what he’s best at but it’s also _bad_. If he ever gets out of this cell, he needs to find something else to be good at.)

“It’s okay,” Skye coos.

Simmons shakes her head against Grant’s chest. “No it’s not. You _know_ it’s not. What I did—”

“You did what you had to,” Skye interrupts, and Simmons’ hands fist tighter in Grant’s shirt.

“I followed my orders,” she says, and the words themselves might not’ve been enough to make him flinch, but there’s so much loathing in her voice—loathing aimed at _herself_ —that he can’t help it. And he doesn’t know if that reminds her of just who she’s clinging to or if it was always where she was going with it, but she finishes with a quiet, almost lost, “Like Ward,” that knocks the breath out of him just as effectively as her punch did.

Skye jolts like she’s been hit, too, and for a second, she’s stiff and still as a corpse. Then she scoots in even closer, and this time the way her arm hooks around his waist _has_ to be deliberate.

“I know,” she breathes, like a confession—a tone that makes more sense when she adds, “Me too.”

Grant still has no idea what’s going on, but he’s one hundred percent positive that he doesn’t like it.

Skye shifts even closer, twisting a little so she can rest her head against Simmons’ while she meets Grant’s eyes, and now he’s breathless for a totally different reason.

For the first time in _months_ , she’s not looking at him with hate. It’s not—it’s not the way she looked at him at Providence, before…everything, when they kissed and she said—what she said—but it makes his heart pound in the same way. The same way that having Simmons clinging to him, miserable but trusting, is.

“I wanted Ward to have hurt you,” Skye says, aiming the words at Simmons while her eyes stay locked with his. “Because I wanted this to be his fault.”

Simmons lets out a shaky breath that might, in a universe where everyone is miserable and kittens are regularly executed as sport, be called a laugh.

“Me too,” she whispers, in the same confessional tone Skye used before. Her tears have finally started to taper off, but her eyes are still glossy with them when she tips her head back to look at him. “It’s easier that way.”

“What is?” he asks. He thinks—hopes—that’s okay, involving himself in the conversation now that they’re both looking at him.

“Surviving,” Simmons says. “It’s easier to—to—keep going when everything bad is your fault.”

“But it’s not.” Skye closes her eyes, burying her face in Simmons’ shoulder. “You don’t even _know_.”

He really, really doesn’t. What he _does_ know is he doesn’t like it—doesn’t like whatever’s got the two of them down here in the middle of the night, doesn’t like Simmons’ face streaked with tears, doesn’t like the stutter in Skye’s breathing.

He likes having them here. He likes not being alone, likes getting looked at with something other than disgust and hate.

But he doesn’t want it. Not if it has to come with all the other stuff.

“What don’t I know?” he asks.

Simmons curls up tighter, somehow clinging to him and Skye at the same time that she’s making herself as small as possible. She looks fragile and wounded and he wants to take back his question, wants to stop whatever she’s about to say—wants to find the words that will make her smile or even _glare_ , anything but this.

Then she takes a deep breath and blanks her expression, the same way she did hours ago, and he wishes for her wounded look back. This time, there’s no tablet for her to grip; instead, she twists her fingers tighter in his shirt—so tight he can feel the seams straining at his shoulder.

“I went undercover,” she says. “In HYDRA.”

“What?” he asks. It comes out a little strangled; that thing from his chest is around his neck now, pulling tight like a noose. “You— _what_?”

He knows what HYDRA does to traitors. He’s _seen_ it. If she’d been caught…

“I did what you did.” Her voice breaks, but her expression stays flat, which is somehow worse. “I spied, and I betrayed people who trusted me, and I framed a man for _my_ crimes, and I _brainwashed_ Donnie Gill—”

“Activated,” Skye corrects half-heartedly. “And I’m the one who killed him, so I’m pretty sure he goes on my list, not yours.”

Grant doesn’t know what to say to that—to _any_ of it. None of his covers do, either. There’s a hell of a lot of pain hiding beneath Skye’s flippant tone (she has a _list_ , she and Simmons _both_ have lists, what the fuck) and somehow, he gets the feeling that she’s just as broken as Simmons but in a totally different way.

And that—that’s wrong. They’re not supposed to be broken. _Grant_ is broken. They’re supposed to be—

They’re supposed to be okay. He wants them to be okay.

“You can blame me,” he says, a little desperately, “if that helps. I don’t mind.”

The sound Simmons makes is _definitely_ not a laugh. Skye just stares.

“It _is_ my fault,” he adds. “If I hadn’t betrayed—”

“Oh my God, stop,” Skye interrupts, and shoves at his shoulder until, bemused, he lets her push him down onto his back.

At least Simmons looks a little confused, too. That’s something.

“Skye?” she asks.

“You’re a murderer,” Skye tells him. “But so am I. And I’m still mad at you and I’m not okay with what you did, but…” After a barely detectable beat of hesitation, she lies down, curling into his side. “But maybe I kinda get it. Even if it was dumb and wrong and mean.”

“And creepy,” Simmons says, a little bit of the stern _how did you pull your stitches, what is so difficult about sitting still_ tone he remembers creeping back into her voice. It should sound ridiculous, coming from a five-nothing woman with plaid pajamas and a tear-stained face, but it doesn’t. “You were _very_ creepy.”

“Yeah,” Grant somehow manages to say. Skye is warm and soft against his side—although the toes she tucks under his shin are _freezing_ —and he’s starting to wonder if this is all just some really elaborate and bizarre dream. “I know. I’m sorry.”

The pleased smile the apology gets him warms him just as much as Skye’s body heat. And when Simmons lies down, too, cuddling against him and reaching one arm across his chest to take Skye’s hand…

He feels warm all the way down to his bones.

“I forgive you,” Skye murmurs against his shoulder, her breath raising goosebumps where it ghosts over his skin. Grant doesn’t quite manage not to shiver. “For some of it.”

“I forgive you,” Simmons echoes, and her free hand finds his wrist, fingers wrapping tight over the scar that the wound she stitched closed healed into. “For some of it.”

Even _some_ forgiveness is more than he deserves, he knows, and he gave up on getting it ages ago. He definitely doesn’t deserve _this_ , the two of them crowded into his bed, holding on to him like he’s even a little bit worthy of it.

The barrier is still down, and Skye and Simmons are both relaxed, breathing slowing like they’re gonna fall asleep right here, half beside and half on top of him. He could be up and out of here before they could even think to stop him.

He’s not worthy of this. Not even a little.

But he wants to be.

He stays right where he is.


End file.
